Vaughn Palmer: B.C.'s NDP’s been there, experienced that

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

By Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun columnist

As the NDP government unravelled in 2001, the leaks became so common that Liberal house leader Gary Farrell-Collins said it was like “reading the government’s mail.” Now the Liberals government is in trouble and it is the NDP that is reading the constant flow of leaked documents.

Photographed by:John Yanyshyn, VANCOUVER SUN

VICTORIA — As the bad news accumulated and the electoral odds worsened for the B.C. Liberal government in recent weeks, the Opposition New Democrats have provided some telling recollections from their own experience in going down with a troubled government.

“I’ve seen this movie,” quipped one former NDP communications staffer, then corrected himself: “I was IN this movie ... and I know how it ends.”

For all the points of distinction between the NDP government that was driven from office in 2001 and the current Liberal administration, being down in the polls this close to election day (a mere 10 weeks) has some common elements, too.

A former NDP cabinet minister invokes some of the things that the B.C. Liberals can expect — i.e. dread — drawing on his experiences in the waking nightmare that was his own last turn in government.

“All new government initiatives will be taken as the crassest politics by the media and the public; that’s a given,” he wrote in a recent email to me. “And then the public service essentially seizes up, waiting to see if any work asked for by the old government will be wanted by the new one.”

By way of example, one of his ex-cabinet colleagues noted recently how when one’s hold on office evaporates with the opinion polls, even the most worthy initiatives can fall by the wayside.

He recalled how in those last few months of NDP government, he’d worked to place an MRI machine in a B.C. community. Thought he had approval to go ahead with Treasury Board. Even went to the community and announced it.

Only after losing the election did he discover that the bureaucracy had allowed the minister to have his little announcement but quietly put the placement of the machine on hold until the new government had a chance to revisit the decision.

Which it did. And promptly sent the machine to a different community.

“Even routine, normal negotiations with interest groups and external bodies become almost impossible to conclude, because they wonder if a better deal might be offered after an election,” says the former cabinet minister quoted above.

Instead, groups that formerly approached governments quietly as supplicants switch to applying pressure in public, hoping to sway opinion before the election and raise expectations for the next government to match.

Case in point (as he noted): the film industry.

“Much of this will come as a surprise to the outgoing government because they’ve never experienced it before,” he concluded. “So the chances they will react inappropriately is high.”

Recent examples: Cabinet minister Rich Coleman and the B.C. Lottery Corporation trying to bully Surrey on that casino proposal. Or Premier Christy Clark initially failing to acknowledge the serious damage done by the ethnic outreach strategy and to apologize for it.

Other New Democrats recall another demoralizing experience from their end of days in government: the unnerving flood of leaks.

There was that day in March 2001 where the then-opposition B.C. Liberals led off question period by quoting from a confidential “my dear colleague” letter that the minister of finance had sent to another minister, citing an embarrassing state of affairs regarding the Insurance Corp. of B.C.

The Opposition applied further pressure with a to-the-point citation from another NDP minister’s own briefing notes, then tabled another directive from finance to a different Crown corporation. Three confidential leaks in one day

Rubbing it in, Gary Farrell-Collins, then the Liberal house leader, told reporters that prep time for question period consisted mainly of “reading the government’s mail.”

“I wish it hadn’t happened,” a dismayed Finance Minister Paul Ramsey told reporters after the Liberals paraded his confidential correspondence in public. “But I’m not going to order a witch hunt.”

For obvious reasons: the directive ordering the hunt for the leaker would be the next thing leaked to the Opposition.

“We’ve waited a long time to be in this position,” as one New Democrat noted this week, touting the way his own party’s inbox is filling up with government confidences, like the toxic ethnic outreach strategy from the premier’s office.

Along with the leaks comes the growing chorus of doubt privately expressed inside the governing party, offset by their public insistence that the party is united behind the leader and there’s no story here.

Cabinet minister Bill Bennett predicting the Liberals will pick up seats from the NDP in the coming election. MLA Kevin Krueger telling reporters that apart from the ethnic outreach strategy, “I can’t think of any other scandals” involving his government.

Cabinet minister Pat Bell maintaining that “I’m as committed to Christy as I’ve ever been.” In fact, he and everyone else in the cabinet supported somebody else for the party leadership.

“I love the classics,” said one former NDP minister this week as the Liberals fretted about a downward slide that was all too recognizable to their opponents. “The story is familiar and it always plays out the same way.”

Like one of Shakespeare’s historical tragedies. You can play it in modern dress, tweak the setting, even switch the gender of the main player.

It still ends with the leader alone on a battlefield, pleading “a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.”